hello anaka, if you go upper east ( in NY) you will see very fashion consious women sporting indian prints. while leafing through a fashion magazine, i saw an ikat print (sold through dolce and gabbana ) for a whopping price of $3000.00. especially the prints of the north east are rarer to find here. of course they are in the closets of the rich and the mighty and i don’t doubt that. what would tick me is that such prints will be oneday/are labelled under some fancy schmancy designers name, than where the original credit actually belongs. i was wondering is there a trademark, copyright or something??

The Upper east side eh?:)
How can there be a copyright to a technique that originated independently in so many parts of the world? I am referring to Ikat here because Ikat is traditional to India, Malaysia, Thailand and even parts of Africa. But now come to think of it, even for a craft like Leheria- a particular tie and dye technique to create stripes along the bias of the fabric- I doubt they could get a copyright. I mean, it would be too tough to do legally. It’s easier for things like a formula for a traditional medicine that cures something. That’s my personal opinion without any research of course. At the same time, Bikram Yoga managed to get some sort of trademark even though he took yoga which is centuries old and put it into a hot room…

What gets me upset is that people refer to a print that looks like Ikat and they call it Ikat, or sometimes they refer to real Ikat as a “print”. Ikat is not printed, it is woven. It’s a tedious form of tie and dye where the yarn (as opposed to the fabric) is tie-dyed with the precision required to get that intricate pattern once the fabric is woven. It’s mind boggling to think that people used such painstaking methods to come up with their beautiful designs. Maybe India could get a copyright on the traditional Ikat designs of Orissa and Andhra, rather than a copyright on the technique itself.

yes anaka.. i am totally with you. “ikat like prints” have jammed the markets here. i recently saw west elm, a furnishing store with these – of course they are not the traditionally woven. if there is something called the indian textile council, they should legalise the traditional designs. as you know at least in the US, everything comes is known under the “designer name” and ikat like prints are getting printed. the traditional weave, originated by the traditional weavers…the story is almost..is Not there. Nobody knows it is an indian thing.